PESHAWAR: The Peshawar High Court has stopped the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government from posting officials to the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Elementary and Secondary Education Foundation (ESEF) on deputation until further orders.

A bench consisting of Justice Ijaz Anwar and Justice Syed Mohammad Attique Shah issued notices to the elementary and secondary education secretary and the ESEF managing director, giving them a fortnight to file comments on a petition against the posting of deputationists to the foundation.

It decided to club the petition with an earlier petition that challenged the appointment of the teaching cadre officials to the positions meant for the management cadre in the education department.

The bench directed that in the meantime no further deputationists should be inducted in or transferred to the foundation.

Seeks its response to petition against such appointments

The petition, filed by Zahir Shah and 28 other ESEF employees, requested the court to declare illegal the practice of posting employees of other departments on the basis of deputation or in the garb of additional charge basis in view of the available and otherwise eligible permanent employees of the foundation.

It identified 22 officers posted to the foundation on deputation as respondents and requested the court to issue them show cause notices to explain under what law they had been holding their respective posts in the foundation.

The petitioners also sought the court’s orders for the government to consider them for promotion and advertise all those posts, which are required by the law to be filled through initial appointment.

Advocates Aamir Javed and M Sangeen Khan appeared for the petitioners and said that the ESEF was set up under the ESEF Ordinance, 2002, for promoting education in the private sector.

They said that the petitioners were regular employees of the foundation serving against different posts.

The lawyers said that through a gazette notification on May 26, 2014, the KP ESEF Employees (Terms and Conditions of Service) Regulations 2013 were issued through which method of appointment and other terms and conditions of employees were defined and determined by the government.

They said that Regulation 6 provided for a method of appointment, which could either be by initial appointment for the posts, so provided in the appendix or through promotion, and if no suitable candidate was available for promotion, then a window for posting through transfer was left open.

The lawyers contended that as per appendix to the regulations, the post of BPS-18 and BPS-19 were to be filled by promotion and if no suitable candidate was available, then they’re to be filled by the way of transfer.

They added that similarly, all positions in BPS-16 and BPS-17 except those of finance officers were to be filled through initial appointment only.

The counsel pointed out that 14 of the petitioners, despite having more than 10 years of service in BPS-17 as the district programme officers, had till date not been considered for promotion to the posts of deputy directors in BPS-18 as per appendix due to the sole reason of unabated transfers by deputation in due course of time unjustly made against their promotion posts.

They argued that instead of promoting the said petitioners or even considering them for promotion, they after 10 years of service were only given personal up-gradation from BPS-17 to BPS-18 through a notification on April 24, 2024.

Thecounsel also said that the remaining 15 petitioners despite available vacant posts for promotion had been made to serve in BPS-16 for the last 10 years having never been considered even for promotion to the post of the finance officer as provided in the Regulations.

They argued that the practice of borrowing employees from other departments to fill specific posts where permanent employees eligible for the specific posts were available was patently illegal and had time and again been deprecated by the superior courts by declaring it unfair and discriminatory.

Published in Dawn, September 21st, 2024